Sony TZ is HOT

Hi all, I have a Sony TZ i bought in Dec. 2008, and I have begun to notice that it is uncomfortably hot on the left side by the fan. The auditorium I am in has no desks, so it has to be on my lap for a good portion of the day and it gets way too hot for the lap, i usually wear jeans, but the heat is severe. I begun checking to see if this is the case when it is on the desk to, and it does get very hot even on the desk. Even with the large capacity battery, which had more room for air flow, it gets very hot.

The room is air conditioned, and I am not using the laptop intensely. Just typing notes, surfing the web, most of the time it is idle.

Any ideas?

 

How is your CPU utilization while it gets so hot? You can check this with ctrl-alt-del, task manager, performance.

So you are saying in the beginning it was not hot?

It's possible your fans have collected too much dust. It might be good to try to clean it with a vacuum cleaner.

 

it takes only a few minutes for it to get pretty warm, like 10-15, then it will get hot if I continue to use it.

cpu utilization is 37%, memory is 57%.

Ill try cleaning it.

 

If your CPU stays at levels like 37 for longer time that could be the reason why it's getting hot.

What OS are you running?
How many background processes?

 

vista business, it will go down to 11 but then climbs back to low 20's, then go down again. I have 80 something processes running

 

That sounds like a lot. I don't know enough about Vista though because I use XP.

You might want to try:
-a clean install
-a semi clean install
-or bloatware removal

But first try to clean out the fans.

Ps. my TZ ran a lot faster when I installed XP. I wrote this guide: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=159585

 

ill try the clean install and cleaning the fan, thanks. It never gave me trouble running vista so I never used the downgrade disk to XP, especially now with windows 7 around the corner.

I have had other sony laptops before, but even before doing a clean install ive never had anything as hot as this. Ill try the recommended remedies and post back, thanks for the help

 

I think thats the best recommendation. After a lot of use dusk collect like a mofo.

 

Also check in Energy settings, the power profile of the wifi. If it's at Max performance it usually generate significantly heat. choose "balanced" -to- "Energysaver" if you aren't so far away from your hotspot.

 

musl85, I just remembered this recall action by Sony. I don't know if you are aware but you may want to check if yours needs to be looked at too.
http://www.sonyinsider.com/2008/09/04/vaio-tz-recall/

One more thing you can try to keep the heat lower is to set the Vaio Control center to energy saving or max battery. What kind of battery life are you getting at the moment?